Re: [PLUG] 802.11 with DevFS on 2.4.12

[gabriel rosenkoetter <gr@eclipsed.net>]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2001 at 12:28:36PM -0400, ian reinhart geiser wrote:
> This was the main reason i posted to the list.
> There seems to be little to no documentation on DevFS.

Huh. Well, I admit to complete ignorance of how DevFS does it's
thing, but I maintain that it should not (nor does it seem to in
what you've said so far)have the slightest to do with your wireless
networking.

(It would seem, based on my cursory perursal of
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/devfs.html, to be an
easier way for device driver authors to deal with interacting with
userland. Network devices never have dealt with user land through
/dev when it was structured around mknod and major/minor numbers,
so I see no reason that they should if it's structured around a
different system.)

> I cannot even figure out what device this bugger is suppose to be.  So far I 
> can see it via the proc file system and the pcmcia tools but that is where it 
> ends.

ifconfig -a doesn't show it? If not, then you're missing something
to make the kernel see it. If so, then off you go, use it. You're
done.

At a guess, Linux will just call the wireless e'net device ethN like
every other e'net device. (On NetBSD, the wireless cards are wiN,
but here Tulip-chip-based cards are tlpN, RealTek-chip-based cards
are rtkN, Xircom-chip-based cards are xiN... I think you see where
I'm going with this. I think our system is nice in that it keeps you
aware of just what the hell your hardware is, but has failings in
that switching an ethernet card chipset requires moving files around
in /etc--ifconfig.dc0 to ifconfig.tlp0, for instance--and how to
deal with cards that provide more than one service, like the Xircom
RealPort cards, is weird... you have to be able to do ifconfig
stuff *and* serial stuff through xiN. The Xircom driver is pure hell
to read and, as near as I can tell, either the modem or the ethernet
will work at any given -current source date, but pretty much never
both.)

-- 
       ~ g r @ eclipsed.net

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